Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer

ECHO NORTH by Joanna Ruth Meyer is a fun, relatively quick read which initially feels like a retelling of Beauty and The Beast. Set in India, this fantasy story involves Echo, a young woman who promises to live for a year with an enchanted wolf in order that her widowed father’s life is spared. Echo and the wolf have some amazing adventures in a magical house that responds to commands and contains a library filled with books turned mirrors.  Readers merely step into each story and when Echo does so, she meets others, including Hal, a young man who seems trapped in the books. Motifs and allusions to other fairy tales involving Tam Lin or Cupid appear. And soon, the suspense and action builds as the house starts to fall apart due to another wizard’s power and Echo and the wolf are endangered. I felt like the ending was not quite the crescendo it could have been, but I enjoyed the read and will look for more from this author. ECHO NORTH was deemed “a first purchase for libraries” by School Library Journal and received starred reviews from both Kirkus (“Epic and engrossing”) and Publishers Weekly (“a compelling, satisfying romantic adventure”). When you finish enjoying our copy look for other fantasy stories like Girls Made of Snow and Glass or Gilded Wolves.

Free All Along by Stephen Drury Smith and Catherine Ellis

February is traditionally African American History Month and in addition to a display, we plan to soon have a copy on our shelves of FREE ALL ALONG by Stephen Drury Smith and Catherine Ellis.  This work is based on The Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Interviews which were conducted and originally published in the early 1960s. Amongst the more recognizable names of those interviewed are Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Andrew Young, Stokely Carmichael, and writers Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. The authors provide brief historical and biographical context for each interviewee. Both this text and the audio archive (provided online by Vanderbilt University) should provide valuable insight and primary source information for students researching the Civil Rights Movement and its leaders. For example, students will be able to read about - or listen to - the voices of those who organized the Greensboro sit-ins, or those who saw to the physical needs of the Freedom Riders and/or the many who debated the direction (non-violence vs. more militant Black Power) of the movement.  

Stephen Drury Smith and Catherine Ellis have also collaborated on After the Fall (interviews and reflections post Sept 11) and on Say It Loud and Say It Plain; the last two are collections of speeches from the Civil Rights Movement and African Americans in the Twentieth Century. All of these texts will provide rich resources as we continue to add more diversity to our collection. If you have a title to suggest, please let us know.